Harvest War
by psychoman222
Summary: Two-shot. Prequel to my 'Shinobi' series. Hokage is a title that Naruto has coveted for as long as he can remember. As he fights a long war against an elusive enemy, he reflects on his life as Lord Sixth.
1. Chapter 1

_**Harvest War**_

_**Part 1**_

Hokage. Translated directly, it means 'Fire Shadow'. However, to the people of Konoha, it meant strength, compassion, protection and so much more. There have been only six that have been chosen, not counting 'Dozen Day Danzo', a man who got the position through treachery, only for karma to end his _very_ short rule using a crazed missing-nin.

I was one of them.

I first got the position after the War of Red Dawn. I was a powerful, charismatic, idealistic warrior who was thoroughly convinced his rule would end all war.

'Be careful what you wish for' was not a saying back then, but it summed up the situation perfectly.

As charismatic as I was, I was the bull in the china shop, not at all suited for the subtle, fine-tuned world of politics.

The other nations sensed that weakness, and snared me in the spider's web of made of legalese and manners. Until the only way out of the web, was to fight.

Only Suna and the Kazekage stood by us when things came to blows.

However, I had an ace in the hole. I was a Seal Master, who just discovered what many consider just a myth.

Artificial Intelligence.

The ability to _manufacture_ a self aware, thinking, _feeling_ being.

We called them Fal-cie: Fuuinjutsu Artificial Lifeforms-Cognitive Intelligent Entity.

First was Jagan, the All-Seeing Eye, the Big Brother of The Fal-cie.

Second was Ganesha, the Scholar.

Third was Kajishin, the Tireless Metalworker.

After Kajishin came Kuebiko, the Master of Agriculture.

Then came Omoikane, the Advisor.

Jagan started out small, slightly bigger than your average video camera. That's because that's what he was _supposed_ to be, before I discovered it was actually aware. By the time the war started, he had so many upgrades he was the size of a train car.

The creation of Jagan spurred me to begin studying how the human brain worked, and just what made a entity 'aware'. Ganesha was my attempt to replicate what made Jagan 'aware'. I was successful, but as he was made to be intelligent, he couldn't do much _but_ think. However, that's all he needed. Most of our technological advancements since he was born came from the mind of Ganesha.

Including Kajishin. This was long before our culture really figured out 'industry', so the idea of a factory was enough to confuse most, much less a completely automated one. Nevertheless, I had enough clout to make it happen, and once Kajishin began producing things that would normally take weeks to make within mere minutes, no one questioned me again when I decided to make a Fal-Cie.

As such, Kuebiko was a much easier sell to the populace in some ways, and a harder one in others. No one thought of the Fal-Cie as money sinks or 'the Hokage's hobby' any more, but Kuebiko, an automated hydroponics chamber the size of a city, was not only a huge investment, but many farmers were concerned their jobs were obsolete if it was finished. Metalworkers mostly managed to avoid that fate, by making things that were more ornate than Kajishin cared to waste time on, but farmers didn't have that luxury. My counter to those concerns was that food wasn't exactly something that went out of fashion, and there were _always_ mouths to feed.

Unlike the previous four, Omoikane was designed for my personal use. He was designed to not only have every law and treaty memorized, but to be an excellent reader of emotions and thoughts, not to mention have excellent manners. But Omoikane was too little, too late. He saw about a month as my political advisor, before he had to use his talents for war.

Once the war broke out, Ganesha came up with our salvation: mass produced Fal-cie. It was every bit as effective as we imagined. with my raw power, Jagan's intel, and an inexhaustible army, there were only two nations left after the war: Konoha and Suna. As such, it became known as the Unification War. In tribute to our alliance, Konoha gifted the barren Suna with Daikokuten, the 'twin' of Kuebiko.

However, Now that peace was assured, Ganesha discovered a new problem- without war to keep our population down, overpopulation was a long-off, but inevitable occurrence. So, we looked at multiple solutions. One solution was to, of course, design higher capacity buildings and infrastructure. A second solution was to send explorers to uncharted areas of our world, which we would then colonize. The third was much more radical. Space Colonization. Of course, there was no good reason we couldn't do all three.

I tasked Jagan with surveying the realm of space for habitable environments, entrusting standard recon teams for the ones on our world. I then constructed Amenhotep, a Fal-cie designed to construct buildings, who was given a 'brain' just shy of Ganesha's capabilities, so he could come up with his own architectural designs. That left Ganesha to learn whether or not space travel was viable.

It was not hard to convince Gaara, The Kazekage _and_ a personal friend (possibly even my _best _friend), of my plan. He agreed to search the West for viable colonies, while I searched East of the Elemental Nations.

Suna found a massive continent, which, to our surprise, was inhabited.

We wasted no time in brokering a treaty. Gaara even got married to one of their rulers to seal the deal. I tried talking him out of it, but he was adamant that he would not risk another war. I later learned that this was complete bullshit, and Gaara married her because he genuinely loved her. He only pretended that it was necessary in order to satisfy his detractors, who claimed he would be betraying Suna if he didn't marry someone from Suna. Of course, if Suna was getting something out of it, that was a different matter.

I myself did something very similar, when Konoha discovered an inhabited island chain called Spira, and I discovered the love of my life.

Yuna.

I won't say it was love at first sight. Granted, I noticed _immediately_ how gorgeous she was, but 'love' and 'lust' are two different things, though they might overlap.

She volunteered to be the ambassador that greeted us, as she was a prominent figure, yet neutral in politics. She also had a sense of civic duty that rivaled my own. She then gave me a guided tour of the entirety of Spira. It was on that tour that I started developing feelings for her. I loved listening to her talk about the places she visited and the people she met, and she did so with such passion that I could tell she loved her home. The tour took two weeks, and yet I still wanted to spend more time with her. So I invited her to Konoha.

There was a bit of culture shock, as the now abundant Fal-cie were completely alien to her, and she was raised in a theocracy, not an authoritarian government like Konoha, but she was quick to adapt. Due to Konoha's expanded borders, it took over a month to show her everything, and I loved every minute of it. However, I quickly began to run out of excuses to keep her around, and she had to return to Spira.

That was when Ganesha hit pay dirt. He devised a way to not only survive in space, but to travel vast distances. The latter was done by using Seals to recreate the doujutsu Kamui.

I put Yuna out of my mind long enough to gather volunteer space colonists, and to construct Njord, the Fal-cie in charge of constructing these newly designed space ships. Jagan was even retrofitted to be a space ship on his own, as was Omoikane and Ganesha, Omoikane becoming my own personal ship.

It took a couple of months to sort that out, so I figured it was time to set up another 'diplomatic mission' to Spira. In reality, I was there to see Yuna. She greeted me like an old friend, and we began talking about every topic under the sun, and yet still never tired of speaking with her. I wanted to stay for longer than I did, but the morning after my arrival, I was called back to settle a minor dispute between two clan heads, whose names I can't recall.

I then waited a week, and set up another 'diplomatic mission.' I think she was getting wise to me, because she insisted we have our 'diplomatic discussion' at a restaurant, not the office given to her after First Contact, as we usually did. Not that I complained.

I descended into habit, visiting Spira for 'diplomatic reasons' at least once a week, each visit losing more and more pretense, until there was no difference between our 'diplomatic dialogues' and a date. Of course, people had figured out what we were doing halfway through month two, and so we fooled precisely no one.

That lasted for four months, before I proposed a 'treaty' that was to be enforced by 'political marriage'.

The happiest moment of my life was when she accepted.

I spent the next two years happily married, having little to do but watch my nation prosper.

I was the Sixth Hokage. During my reign, to the people of the world, Hokage meant peace, safety, and prosperity.

Until the Reapers came.

* * *

AN: Let me know if you feel I glossed over too much, and if so, what. It was my intention to write this as if it were being written many years after the fact, and as such, stuff is either glossed over or forgotten.

I am very well aware that this is not my usual style, and as such, please let me know how I did.

The second half of this fic should be up shortly.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Harvest War**_

_**Part 2**_

When the Reapers came, it was Spira they attacked first. To this day, I have no idea why. Whatever their reasons, their first strike took Yuna. While her loss devastated me, in a way, I'm glad. She didn't have to see the horrors of the Harvest War. She didn't have to see what I was forced to do, and what I'd become.

Spira, looking for culpability in the wake of this attack, blamed Konoha, and severed our existing treaties. As Yuna was the one who brokered peace between us, there were many who chose to honor her memory by calling her a traitor, and worse. Konoha even developed new slang commemorating their willingness to ignore all the good Yuna and Konoha had done for them. "As loyal as a Spiran" became a term to describe someone who was completely self-serving.

Disgusted and overcome by grief and rage, I left, and provided no military support to them in the coming war. It was a decision I'm not too proud of, in hindsight. As a result, Spira lasted roughly a week.

That week, I used to convert Konoha into a state of Total War, which meant that anything that wasn't useful to the war effort was ignored. Instead of producing commercial goods, Kajishin produced weapons. Instead of research to ensure our prosperity, Ganesha researched ways to enhance our military. Instead of colony ships and merchant vessels, Njord made warships. Instead of houses and apartments, Amenhotep made bunkers and bases.

It was not enough.

We constructed space stations called Star Forges, which could mass produce warships on an unprecedented scale.

It was not enough.

We developed a cloaking system for Jagan, allowing him to spy on the reapers, without them even realising he existed.

It was not enough.

I turned my full might against them, and Kurama's as well.

It was not enough.

Using jutsu and 'magic', we managed to eliminate them on a disproportionate scale. A single ninja was, on average, enough to take down one of their smaller ships.

It was not enough.

A turning point in the war, was when we realized, thanks to Jagan and Ganesha, what they were, what they wanted, and why they attacked.

They were a massive conglomeration of beings, forged into 'bio-metal' and turned into ships.

As such, each had access to a massive amount of chakra, nearly as much as a tailed beast... if they knew had to access it. So I issued an edict, one that I wished I had _any_ alternative to. If any person knowing how to manipulate chakra so much as _looked_ as if they were going to be captured… they were to be killed. Otherwise, they would realise our abilities wasn't 'the foolish mysticism of a primitive species', and in reality, was a major weapon. Better one person to die than force the rest of us to face _countless_ bijuu-scale threats. Well, more so than we already _were_.

Secondly, we learned that they considered us 'ready to harvest' based on the fact we had the Fal-cie. So, I came up with a plan.

Part 1:By sending 'dumb' ships filled with refugees either with enough supplies to start a new colony, or to a pre-existing colony that the Reapers had not found, we could preserve our species. These ships were to carry no records on how to create Fal-cie or manipulate chakra, in case they were intercepted.

Part 2: Any new and existing colonies were to cease contact, in order to hide their existence.

Part 3: All remaining forces and Fal-cie, with a few exceptions, were to muster a massive counterattack as a distraction, allowing those 'dumb' ships to escape. It was a suicide mission, which I would lead. Gaara was to escape with the refugees, and continue the war effort.

Gaara protested, to the point where he refused to board _any _ship, much less a non-military one.

However, I managed to talk Temari into forcibly sedating him, and then Shanghai'd him.

Karma struck when the crew of the Omoikane, and Omoikane itself, did the exact same thing to _me._

I have many bad memories of the war, but one of the worst ones was sitting, powerless in my escape pod, watching as my men and Fal-cie threw themselves into a fight they knew they could not win, just to buy the refugees some time to escape. Watching as thousands of my warships committed suicide-by-Reaper on my order, without even having the comfort of being there with them.

After they were all eliminated, the Reapers swarmed what was left of my home-world, looking to harvest the survivors, when a lone Exterminatus-class, waiting for this exact moment (again, on my order) fired its Cyclonic missile at my home, burning the land and boiling the sea, and turning thousands of Reapers to slag with it. It was quickly destroyed by the remaining Reaper fleet.

After they left, some to pursue the refugee ships they managed to detect, the rest searching for a new species to destroy, Jagan recovered my escape pod.

Together with him, I enacted stage 4 of my plan.

One cluster of colonies were to be manipulated to never develop much in the way of technology, and thus perpetually remain beneath the Reaper's notice.

Another cluster was to be developed from scratch, without any of our influence, in order to develop naturally. Any member of our culture were only to intervene if it risked complete destruction. It turned into a massive Galactic Republic, it's main world called Coruscant.

A third was slated to be developed in a similar way to the Galactic Republic, but many of the ships went off-course into inhospitable planets, with the exception of one, Earth. It was left to develop naturally, though some of our culture survived through word-of-mouth.

The fourth cluster was to be Konoha's survival as a culture, but the strange, almost warped physics of that section of the universe corrupted the Fal-cie made there, causing them to rebel, and as such, a lot of it's culture had to be remade from scratch. I dispatched Rock Lee to restore order, and while he was successful in reuniting them, the culture had changed into one that made Bloody Mist look like pacifists.

However, as much as I disapproved, it was our strongest, most populous set of colonies. They routinely held off or eliminated threats that made the Reapers look like a joke, but that was a double-edged sword, as they were tied up by those very same threats, and if they _weren't_, they would _become_ the massive threat to the other sectors, forcing them to join or die.

I am the Sixth Hokage. To the humanity that exists today, Hokage means nothing, just a set of syllables. I am ruler of a world that no longer exists, and a culture that no longer exists. I would have stopped existing along with it, if not for one final mission.

Primary Objective: End The Harvest War. For good.

Secondary Objectives: None.


End file.
